 | Twice-told tales |  |
FANCY'S SHOW BOX.
FANCY'S SHOW BOX.
A MORALITY.
What is Guilt? A stain upon the soul. And it is
a point of vast interest, whether the soul may contract
such stains, in all their depth and flagrancy, from
deeds which have been plotted and resolved upon, but
which, physically, have never had existence. Must
the fleshly hand, and visible frame of man, set its seal
to the evil designs of the soul, in order to give them
their entire validity against the sinner? Or, while none
but crimes perpetrated are cognizable before an earthly
tribunal, will guilty thoughts—of which guilty deeds
are no more than shadows—will these draw down the
full weight of a condemning sentence, in the supreme
court of eternity? In the solitude of a midnight
chamber, or in a desert, afar from men, or in a church,
while the body is kneeling, the soul may pollute itself
even with those crimes, which we are accustomed to
truth.
Let us illustrate the subject by an imaginary example.
A venerable gentleman, one Mr. Smith, who had long
been regarded as a pattern of moral excellence, was
warming his aged blood with a glass or two of generous
wine. His children being gone forth about their
worldly business, and his grandchildren at school, he
sat alone, in a deep, luxurious arm chair, with his feet
beneath a richly carved mahogany table. Some old
people have a dread of solitude, and when better company
may not be had, rejoice even to hear the quiet
breathing of a babe, asleep upon the carpet. But Mr.
Smith, whose silver hair was the bright symbol of a life
unstained, except by such spots as are inseparable from
human nature, he had no need of a babe to protect
him by its purity, nor of a grown person, to stand
between him and his own soul. Nevertheless, either
Manhood must converse with Age, or Womanhood
must soothe him with gentle cares, or Infancy must
sport around his chair, or his thoughts will stray into
the misty region of the past, and the old man be chill
and sad. Wine will not always cheer him. Such
might have been the case with Mr. Smith, when,
through the brilliant medium of his glass of old Madeira,
he beheld three figures entering the room. These
were Fancy, who had assumed the garb and aspect of
an itinerant showman, with a box of pictures on her
back; and Memory, in the likeness of a clerk, with a
and a huge manuscript volume beneath her arm; and
lastly, behind the other two, a person shrouded in a
dusky mantle, which concealed both face and form.
But Mr. Smith had a shrewd idea that it was Conscience.
How kind of Fancy, Memory, and Conscience, to
visit the old gentleman, just as he was beginning to
imagine that the wine had neither so bright a sparkle,
nor so excellent a flavor, as when himself and the
liquor were less aged! Through the dim length of
the apartment, where crimson curtains muffled the
glare of sunshine, and created a rich obscurity, the
three guests drew near the silver-haired old man.
Memory, with a finger between the leaves of her huge
volume, placed herself at his right hand. Conscience,
with her face still hidden in the dusky mantle, took
her station on the left, so as to be next his heart; while
Fancy set down her picture-box upon the table, with
the magnifying glass convenient to his eye. We can
sketch merely the outlines of two or three, out of the
many pictures, which at the pulling of a string, successively
peopled the box with the semblances of living
scenes.
One was a moonlight picture; in the back ground, a
lowly dwelling; and in front, partly shadowed by a
tree, yet besprinkled with flakes of radiance, two
youthful figures, male and female. The young man
stood with folded arms, a haughty smile upon his lip,
ward at the kneeling girl. She was almost prostrate
at his feet, evidently sinking under a weight of shame
and anguish, which hardly allowed her to lift her
clasped hands in supplication. Her eyes she could not
lift. But neither her agony, nor the lovely features on
which it was depicted, nor the slender grace of the
form which it convulsed, appeared to soften the obduracy
of the young man. He was the personification of
triumphant scorn. Now, strange to say, as old Mr.
Smith peeped through the magnifying glass, which
made the objects start out from the canvas with magical
deception, he began to recognise the farm-house, the
tree, and both the figures of the picture. The young
man, in times long past, had often met his gaze within
the looking-glass; the girl was the very image of his
first love—his cottage-love—his Martha Burroughs!
Mr. Smith was scandalized. `Oh, vile and slanderous
picture!' he exclaims. `When have I triumphed over
ruined innocence? Was not Martha wedded, in her
teens, to David Tomkins, who won her girlish love, and
long enjoyed her affection as a wife? And ever since
his death, she has lived a reputable widow!' Meantime,
Memory was turning over the leaves of her
volume, rustling them to and fro with uncertain fingers,
until, among the earlier pages, she found one which
had reference to this picture. She reads it, close to
the old gentleman's ear; it is a record merely of sinful
thought, which never was embodied in an act; but,
and strikes a dagger to the heart of Mr. Smith. Though
not a death-blow, the torture was extreme.
The exhibition proceeded. One after another, Fancy
displayed her pictures, all of which appeared to have
been painted by some malicious artist, on purpose to
vex Mr. Smith. Not a shadow of proof could have
been adduced, in any earthly court, that he was guilty
of the slightest of those sins which were thus made to
stare him in the face. In one scene, there was a table
set out, with several bottles, and glasses half filled with
wine, which threw back the dull ray of an expiring
lamp. There had been mirth and revelry, until the
hand of the clock stood just at midnight, when Murder
stept between the boon companions. A young man
had fallen on the floor, and lay stone dead, with a
ghastly wound crushed into his temple, while over him,
with a delirium of mingled rage and horror in his
countenance, stood the youthful likeness of Mr. Smith.
The murdered youth wore the features of Edward
Spencer! `What does this rascal of a painter mean?'
cries Mr. Smith, provoked beyond all patience. `Edward
Spencer was my earliest and dearest friend, true
to me as I to him, through more than half a century.
Neither I, nor any other, ever murdered him. Was
he not alive within five years, and did he not, in token
of our long friendship, bequeath me his gold-headed
cane, and a mourning ring?' Again had Memory
been turning over her volume, and fixed at length upon
it when she was tipsy. The purport was, however,
that, while Mr. Smith and Edward Spencer were
heating their young blood with wine, a quarrel had
flashed up between them, and Mr. Smith, in deadly
wrath, had flung a bottle at Spencer's head. True, it
missed its aim, and merely smashed a looking-glass;
and the next morning, when the incident was imperfectly
remembered, they had shaken hands with a
hearty laugh. Yet, again, while Memory was reading,
Conscience unveiled her face, struck a dagger to the
heart of Mr. Smith, and quelled his remonstrance
with her iron frown. The pain was quite excruciating.
Some of the pictures had been painted with so doubtful
a touch, and in colors so faint and pale that the
subjects could barely be conjectured. A dull, semitransparent
mist had been thrown over the surface of
the canvas, into which the figures seemed to vanish,
while the eye sought most earnestly to fix them. But,
in every scene, however dubiously portrayed, Mr.
Smith was invariably haunted by his own lineaments,
at various ages, as in a dusty mirror. After poring
several minutes over one of these blurred and almost
indistinguishable pictures, he began to see, that the
painter had intended to represent him, now in the
decline of life, as stripping the clothes from the backs
of three half-starved children. `Really, this puzzles
me!' quoth Mr. Smith, with the irony of conscious
him a fool, as well as a scandalous knave. A man of
my standing in the world, to be robbing little children
of their clothes! Ridiculous!'—But while he spoke,
Memory had searched her fatal volume, and found a
page, which, with her sad, calm voice, she poured into
his ear. It was not altogether inapplicable to the
misty scene. It told how Mr. Smith had been grievously
tempted, by many devilish sophistries, on the
ground of a legal quibble, to commence a lawsuit
against three orphan children, joint heirs to a considerable
estate. Fortunately, before he was quite
decided, his claims had turned out nearly as devoid of
law, as justice. As Memory ceased to read, Conscience
again thrust aside her mantle, and would have
struck her victim with the envenomed dagger, only
that he struggled, and clasped his hands before his
heart. Even then, however, he sustained an ugly
gash.
Why should we follow Fancy through the whole
series of those awful pictures? Painted by an artist
of wondrous power, and terrible acquaintance with the
secret soul, they embodied the ghosts of all the never-perpetrated
sins, that had glided through the life-time
of Mr. Smith. And could such beings of cloudy
fantasy, so near akin to nothingness, give valid evidence
against him, at the day of judgment? Be that
the case or not, there is reason to believe, that one
truly penitential tear would have washed away each
But Mr. Smith, at a prick of Conscience too keen to
be endured, bellowed aloud, with impatient agony, and
suddenly discovered that his three guests were gone.
There he sat alone, a silver-haired and highly venerated
old man, in the rich gloom of the crimson-curtained
room, with no box of pictures on the table, but
only a decanter of most excellent Madeira. Yet his
heart still seemed to fester with the venom of the
dagger.
Nevertheless, the unfortunate old gentleman might
have argued the matter with Conscience, and alleged
many reasons wherefore she should not smite him so
pitilessly. Were we to take up his cause, it should
be somewhat in the following fashion. A scheme of
guilt, till it be put in execution, greatly resembles a
train of incidents in a projected tale. The latter, in
order to produce a sense of reality in the reader's mind,
must be conceived with such proportionate strength by
the author as to seem, in the glow of fancy, more like
truth, past, present, or to come, than purely fiction.
The prospective sinner, on the other hand, weaves his
plot of crime, but seldom or never feels a perfect
certainty that it will be executed. There is a dreaminess
diffused about his thoughts; in a dream, as it
were, he strikes the death-blow into his victim's heart,
and starts to find an indelible blood-stain on his hand.
Thus a novel-writer, or a
dramatist, in creating a villain
of romance, and fitting him with evil deeds, and the
perpetrated, may almost meet each other, half way
between reality and fancy. It is not until the crime is
accomplished, that guilt clenches its gripe upon the
guilty heart and claims it for its own. Then, and not
before, sin is actually felt and acknowledged, and, if
unaccompanied by repentance, grows a thousand fold
more virulent by its self-consciousness. Be it considered,
also, that men often over-estimate their capacity
for evil. At a distance, while its attendant circumstances
do not press upon their notice, and its results
are dimly seen, they can bear to contemplate it. They
may take the steps which lead to crime, impelled by
the same sort of mental action as in working out a
mathematical problem, yet be powerless with compunction,
at the final moment. They knew not what deed
it was, that they deemed themselves resolved to do.
In truth, there is no such thing in man's nature, as a
settled and full resolve, either for good or evil, except
at the very moment of execution. Let us hope, therefore,
that all the dreadful consequences of sin will not
be incurred, unless the act have set its seal upon the
thought.
Yet, with the slight fancy-work which we have
framed, some sad and awful truths are interwoven.
Man must not disclaim his brotherhood, even with the
guiltiest, since, though his hand be clean, his heart
has surely been polluted by the flitting phantoms of
iniquity. He must feel, that, when he shall knock at
can entitle him to entrance there. Penitence must
kneel, and Mercy come from the footstool of the throne,
or that golden gate will never open!
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